New Testament Lesson: Acts 2:1-21 (RSV)
The Coming of the Holy Spirit
2 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. 3 And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
5 Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. 6 And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. 7 And they were amazed and wondered, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? 9 Par′thians and Medes and E′lamites and residents of Mesopota′mia, Judea and Cappado′cia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phryg′ia and Pamphyl′ia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyre′ne, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11 Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” 12 And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” 13 But others mocking said, “They are filled with new wine.”
Peter Addresses the Crowd
14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. 15 For these men are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day; 16 but this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:
17 ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams;
18 yea, and on my menservants and my maidservants in those days
I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.
19 And I will show wonders in the heaven above
and signs on the earth beneath,
blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke;
20 the sun shall be turned into darkness
and the moon into blood,
before the day of the Lord comes,
the great and manifest day.
21 And it shall be that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’
Gospel Text: John 7:37-39 (RSV)
Rivers of Living Water
37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and proclaimed, “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. 38 He who believes in me, as[a] the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” 39 Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive; for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
First, a bit of history. The feast this passage refers to is, of course, Pentecost. This is the festival which we Christians claim as the “birthday of the Christian Church.”
But this festival goes ‘way back into history. Our name for it, “Pentecost,” comes from the Greek word for “fifty” (πεντήκοντα), as it takes place fifty days after Passover. The Jewish name for “Pentecost” is “Shavuot” (שבועות) and is also called the “Feast of Weeks.” Originally, Shavuot was a harvest festival observed when the year’s wheat harvest was completed. Later, the observance was expanded to include the Giving of the Law by Moses. Shavuot was the middle of the three great festivals – coming after Passover and before the Feast of Tabernacles. It also had a unique characteristic: The law stated that on that day people should not do their everyday work; so it was a holiday for everyone, from the highest to the lowest in the land.
Now back to the passage from Acts: “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. 3 And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”
For pure, amazing excitement, it’s hard to beat what happened that day to the disciples. It’s also impossible to overemphasize the significance of this event. From that moment on, their lives were changed. We note this, for one thing, by now calling them “the Apostles” instead of “the disciples.” For another, once again, this is the day on which we mark the birth of the Christian Church.
Imagine, though, what it must have been like! The Rev. Marshall A. Jolly puts it this way: “Picture it: The disciples are gathered for worship, as was their custom. They’ve brought with them some bread and some wine, and perhaps some olives or a few pieces of broiled fish. They arrive at the specified location, greet one another with the kiss of peace, and then begin their simple and intimate worship service. One of them reads from the Hebrew Scriptures, another offers a meditation and all of them share in the communal meal.
“But all of a sudden, a violent rush of wind bursts into the room and flames descend upon the heads of the disciples! They try to communicate what is happening, only to discover that they are all speaking different languages! The commotion in the house where the disciples are gathered is so loud that it quickly draws the attention of the people outside. As a crowd gathers and sees what is happening, many are amazed.”[1]
Well, who wouldn’t be? Odd balls of light that looked like fire hovering over their heads but didn’t burn? Spontaneous speaking in languages they’d never learned? This would be far outside of daily experience even today, as used to technological wonders as we might be. We need to bear in mind that these men were, for the most part, simple fishermen. They knew how to catch fish, and not a great deal more. Their education had probably been pretty basic. Learning foreign languages was just not part of their curriculum.
For those who came rushing over to see what the commotion was about, it was much the same – their education had been limited to what they needed to know to make their way in the world.
So it’s understandable that they would see these men carrying on like drunken fools and assume that they were drunken fools! What they were witnessing just didn’t fit into their world view; and because it didn’t fit, there had to be a logical explanation for it that would make it fit: “These guys just got into the wine a little too early in the day!”
Not so, Peter protests. “We are filled with the Holy Spirit!” There may have been some in the crowd who took him at his word. It’s equally likely that there were others who just shook their heads smugly and walked away believing they’d just seen a bunch of guys partying. Nothing out of the ordinary, really. Move along; nothing to see here…
One writer, Doug Bratt, reminds us that Jesus had promised his disciples that they would be his witnesses to the ends of the earth; yet, as he writes, “the gospels consistently portray Jesus’ disciples as a bunch of slow, timid bumblers who never quite fully recognized who he was. They also abandoned him as quickly as they could when he got into trouble.”[2]
They needed help. And today we read about how they got that help they needed; and, more even than that, we read about how they were now transformed and now able to begin transforming the world. They were timid and slow no longer – on this watershed day, all that was past, and they began the next part of their lives as the courageous and tireless Apostles we have come to know, the men who endured any hardship and privation to spread the Gospel to all corners what was then the known world.
And, fittingly, it starts with Peter, who now begins to live up to his reputation as The Rock on whom the Church will be built. As people start to walk away, laughing and making snide comments about “those drunks over there,” Peter seizes the moment and makes one of the first and one of the boldest announcements about the new state of the world that has ever been made, ending with the great invitation from God that “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Whoever you are. Whatever you might have been or done in the past. Wherever you might find yourself. If you call on that Name that is above all other names, you will be heard. You shall be saved.
God provides what we need. William Barclay tells us that the Jewish people had never ceased to think of themselves as the Chosen People of God, but they had never been numerous and had enjoyed only relatively brief periods where they enjoyed the status they felt they deserved; the glory days of King David and King Solomon had been relatively short. The bulk of their history had been pretty much one long disaster. One invading army after another had swept into their land and made them the subjects of their empire, from the Egyptians to the Assyrians to the Babylonians to the Greeks, and now to the Romans. Yet, as Alexander Pope wrote back in 1734, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast;” for the people of Israel, the hope stubbornly endured that God would one day step in and do for them what they could not do for themselves. They called this great day “the day of the Lord,” on which all things would be set right. “Here, Peter is saying to the Jews: ‘For generations, you have dreamed of the day of God, the day when God would break into history. Now, in Jesus, that day has come.’ Behind all the old imagery stands the great truth that, in Jesus, God arrived in person on the scene of human history.”[3]
The gates to the Kingdom of Heaven have been thrown open – all you need do is walk through them!
That’s what it’s really all about – not supernatural flames or speaking in tongues. It’s about the promise God gives us for a new way of living, it’s about the great invitation Jesus gives us to accept that promise, and the way Jesus equips us with the Holy Spirit to live out and spread the Good News, so that all the world will hear it!
This is not to say that our path will always be smooth. The Apostles’ experiences attest to that. But it does mean that, no matter how rocky or steep the path, or how dark the night, God in the Person of the Holy Spirit is always with us, lifting us up, blessing even our hardships and consecrating us to be Jesus’ eyes, hands, feet, and ears in the world.
We are blessed, that we might bless the world!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] Jolly, (The Rev.) Marshall A., “Things like that don’t happen anymore, right?”, Day of Pentecost (A) – 2014, Sermons That Work, http://www.episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/stw/2014/05/21/day-of-pentecost-a-2014/
[2] Bratt, Doug, http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/sermon-starters/day-of-pentecost-a/?type=old_testament_lectionary
[3] Barclay, William, The Acts of the Apostles: The New Daily Study Bible, Louisville, Kentucky, Westminster John Knox Press, 2003, p. 28